Nerve blocks are an increasingly used option for providing adequate surgical anaesthesia, post-operative analgesia or treating various chronic pathologies; it is performed by depositing a local anaesthetic, at sufficient volume and concentration, at the adequate site or sites by means of a needle; i.e. as close as possible to the nerves without puncturing the blood vessels that accompany them. To this end, it is very important to always perform aspiration prior to the injection.
As may be seen from the preceding paragraph, performing a correct nerve block is dependent upon the location of the areas of the body where the anaesthetic is to be applied, on the basis of anatomical references or the use of neurostimulation devices or ultrasound and ultrasonography techniques.
The fact that anaesthesiologists use ultrasound scanning or neurostimulation in order to locate the nerves to be blocked entails that one of their hands handles the device whilst the other handles the needle; for this reason, controlling both the aspiration and the administration of the anaesthetic to be injected must be left to another person or requires complex contraptions that may be handled with other parts of the body, for example, the feet, by pressing down a pedal.
The present invention proposes a device that allows for anaesthesiologists to handle the needle and continuously control both aspiration and administration of the anaesthetic when desired, with a single hand, thereby preventing potential undesirable intravascular injections.